From The Hill:
President Obama is struggling in the polls against would-be Republican challengers because voters don’t know the GOP contenders well enough yet, a top White House official said Thursday.
Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer expressed confidence that Obama would perform better against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Texas Gov. Rick Perry once Americans familiarize themselves with those GOP presidential candidates.
“My guess is that a significant portion of the people polled, the American people, don’t know what Mitt Romney’s economic plan is yet,” Pfeiffer said on MSNBC. “I’m confident they will know that he supports Cut, Cap and Balance, which would essentially end Medicare, end Social Security.”…
The only way to figure that Cut, Cap and Balance would end Medicare or Social Security is to lie about Cut, Cap and Balance. As it turns out, flat out, bald-faced lies don’t seem to be a difficult proposition for Democrats. And if your man can’t run on his record while his opponents have ideas that play well with the public then you have two alternatives: either gracefully surrender, or lie like a rug about your opponents.
Rely on it: from now until election day there will be an increasing crescendo of fear and smear tactics from the Democrats – to hear them talk about it, the GOP plan will be to kick granny off social security, kick sick people out of hospitals, kick kids out of school and bring back Jim Crow laws…all so we can give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.
Democrats are not doing this to win support – one thing about popularity is that once it is lost it is very hard to get back. The chances of Obama winning enthusiastic support from people who backed him in 2008 but have soured on him in 2011 are very small – unless some gigantic event entirely outside his control allows Obama to shine, there is little chance that the disenchanted will come back. Democrats are doing this to fire up their base and dispirit independents. But running a nasty, dishonest and slanderous campaign, Democrats hope to fire up the mindless rank-and-file left (who will actually believe the GOP wants to be all that nasty) while making politics so vile that independents stay home in droves…Democrats then count on their registration advantage and ground game to out-turnout the GOP on election day.
A party with a sense of honor wouldn’t do this – a party whose leaders cared more for America than their own power and wealth would run on their record and let the American people decide. Of course, a decent, honorable party like that holding the Democrats’ current record would be crushed at the polls. For the Democrat leaders, there is no upside to that. They want to win – and this is the only way they can possibly win. The bad news for them is that it won’t work.
I think that the Democrats’ primary problem in 2012 is that they have already been so nasty and slanderous since 2001 that the people have tuned them out. When an Andre Carson claims that the TEA Party wants to lynch black Americans, it is considered outrageous and disgusting, but it is also considered par for the course. People expect Democrats to act like that but don’t allow it to affect behavior. There is a chance that when Democrats really pour on the filth it will work as Democrats hope, but my view is that it will just steel the hearts of both GOPers and independents to have done with the Democrats…to chastise them so severely that they may even learn their lesson and rethink their policies and tactics.
But get ready for it – they will be as nasty and disgusting as they can be. They will lie about us. They will insult us. They will use the crudest appeals to liberal racism. They will send minions out to disrupt our events. They will use false-flag tactics…liberal activists presenting themselves as conservatives and TEA Partiers mouthing racist sentiments. They will give marching orders to the MSM and so the MSM will gang up on us and highlight every slander as if it were true, while hiding the truth about the left. It will be a long and very difficult campaign.
And we’re going to win.
